New glycoprotein filament TLP-4 identified in lotus pond water samples from
Tsinghua University
With the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China's
major research program "Cracking the Sugar Code of Life" (approval number:
92478205), the team of Academician Yan Ning and Associate Professor Yan Chuangye
from the School of Life Sciences at Tsinghua University have made progress in
the study of advanced three-dimensional structures of sugar. The research
results, titled "CryoSeek II: Cryo EM analysis of glycofibers from fresh water
reveals well structured glycans coating linear tetrapeptide repeats", were
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal
on January 7, 2025. The link to the paper is:
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2423943122 .
The research team proposed the CryoSeek research strategy and discovered a
novel protein filament TLP-4 (Tsinghua Lotus Pond tetrapeptide repeats) with a
regular sugar structure. TLP-4 consists of linear tetrapeptide repeat fragments,
each containing a conserved 3,4-dihydroxyproline (DiHyp), and both 3-OH and 4-OH
are highly O-glycosylated; Adjacent to DiHyp, there exists a conserved serine or
threonine modified by O-glycosylation; The periphery of TLP-4 protein filaments
is enveloped by sugar chains, and the interactions between sugars play a
decisive role in the composition of the protein filaments; These research
results provide new ideas for the study of advanced sugar structures.